Rejoice! Israeli counterinsurgency is losing

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With the new Netanyahu regime and the ongoing protests by settlers inside the Zionist entity, we must return to an understanding of what "Israel" really is. "Israel" is a settler colony created by the United States and Britain to establish a foothold in West Asia.

It is an occupation.

Counterinsurgency, or COIN, is the military doctrine that is dedicated to maintaining an occupation. According to the United States official COIN military strategy website: "An effective COIN operation will utilize all instruments of national power to integrate and synchronize political, security, legal, economic, development, and psychological activities carried out by the host nation and applicable US government and multinational partners to create a holistic approach aimed at weakening the insurgents while simultaneously bolstering the government’s legitimacy in the eyes of the contested population."

Modern counterinsurgency: Assimilation for some, genocide for the rest

The Zionist entity "Israel" has been engaged in a protracted COIN operation since its inception and even before then when the British soldiers and Zionist settlers worked together to crush the 1936-39 Palestinian revolution. The "Oslo accords", after the second Intifada, which fractured the PLO and created the PA, should be understood as the United States and "Israel's" most successful achievement in counterinsurgency. The puppet Palestinian Authority has been their greatest asset in weakening the Resistance.

The so-called liberal Zionist movement and their western-backed NGOs also contribute to the COIN strategy of Oslo. Theirs is the "legal struggle" which demands "equal rights" for (some) Palestinians but makes no challenges to the entity as a political and economic force. Of course, sometimes they make pithy statements that "resistance is justified," but this is never to promote national liberation, only to sideline it. They would see the Palestinian national liberation struggle—and the larger struggle for the Arab Nation—perverted into nebulous calls for "accountability".

This is also the strategy promoted by the likes of Azmi Bishara and his sponsors in Qatar. It would after all be much easier for Arab monarch's normalization if "Israel" kept a lower profile. Saudi Arabia openly says that it wants a "two-state solution" before full normalization with "Israel".

The United States is likely the most compelling example of this strategy. Following the militant Black Liberation Movement of the 60s, the occupation government moved to grant "Civil Rights" and other pittances to Black people that served to rebuild the "legitimacy" of the government and imperialist economic system. We see the success of their strategy today. They have fully integrated a privileged group of (some) Black people into the economy and the government. In the United States, Black politicians and policemen and Black-led NGOs have replaced Black Liberation. Of course, none of them have stopped the lynchings, prison slavery, or Black genocide. In fact, the compradors participate in it as willing collaborators.

We could imagine this nightmare scenario in Palestine. A "new Israel" that stops forced evictions only to replace them with land buyouts— economic displacement—facilitated by the PA and Gulf tycoons; or where there are no more incursions into Al Aqsa, but there are also no more Palestinians to worship there.

"Israel" nearing end

Today, the Israeli regime is backed into a corner for many reasons. The Palestinians defeated the IOF in Seif Al-Quds and forced negotiations during the Unity of Fields battle. The IOF are facing daily confrontations in the West Bank. Hezbollah, with their missiles, forced Israeli concessions over the Kharish gas fields. The Resistance has never been more powerful than it is today. All of this compounded because "Israel's" main supporter, the United States, is no longer the undisputed hegemon of the planet.

Thanks to Hajj Qasem, the Palestinian Resistance is armed, and their rockets have changed the equation. The regional Resistance is unified like never before. When the battle begins, it will be nothing like the catastrophe of Al-Naksah.

In light of this, a COIN strategy of bolstering the PA and accelerating the assimilation of a privileged class is the only available counterinsurgency strategy that could sustain "Israel" and the American project. In order to survive, it would need to create a "fake" Palestinian state. However, the new Netanyahu regime is doing the exact opposite. Rather than relying on its best weapon, the regime is abandoning the PA and resorting to a strategy of naked terror.

Earlier this month, the Netanyahu regime announced seizing PA revenues. Another new law that is being proposed will revoke Israeli "citizenship" for the Palestinians who receive financial assistance from the PA. This law will only further isolate and de-legitimize the PA in the eyes of Palestinians. The Ben-Gvir-led police ban on the Palestinian flag, too, is a practice that further de-legitimizes itself. We should not be so foolish as to think that being Palestinian has ever been "legal" except for a privileged few.

Lessons for the Solidarity Movement

If someone wants to scare us with Netanyahu, with the new (Israeli) Minister of War [Yoav Galant] or with anyone else, (he is wasting his time because) we have already dealt with them in the previous years... Of course, such a government does not scare us, and never such governments have been able to scare us in any way. And more than that, we can even be optimistic about it, contrary to what most (analysts) say: when a new government is composed of corrupt and crazy people, with the grace of God, it will only accelerate the end of this temporary entity.

Hezbollah Secretary General, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah

The "human rights defenders", "journalists" and "intellectuals" who are working overtime to present Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir as exceptional or unique "neo-Zionists" are doing the work of the enemy. There is no such thing as leftist, centrist, or rightist in the Israeli government.

The recent escalation of violence is quantitative, not qualitative. A quantitative increase in violence and attacks and assassinations are a natural consequence of the escalation of a conflict. Those who decry this are denying the very legitimacy of the Palestinian armed struggle.

What will they do when the fighting truly escalates? What will they do when Palestinians, because of the ascent of regional allies, gain a military-technological edge in important fields like drones? What will they say when the Palestinians are no longer murdered a hundred to one for every occupier eliminated but have flipped the ratio? What will they do when American and European economic and military investments are turned to dust, endangering the globally segregated "way of life" of the "consumer society" in the imperialist center?

What will they do when confronted by a new political equation where Palestinians and their popular Resistance organizations dictate the terms? The answer is plain to those who understand the class leadership and political ambiguity of the present "solidarity movement" in the imperialist countries.